Word: abstract
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...Abstract expressionism, that image-destroying, paint-flinging whirlwind, held sway as America's -- and modernism's -- dominant style during the 1940s and '50s. Though its base was New York City, the abstract-expressionist ethos pervaded every artistic center in the U.S., including the San Francisco Bay area. There, during the late '40s, a flourishing local school had been influenced by the forceful presence of artist-teachers Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko...
...bold move that David Park, a young instructor at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, made one day in 1949. He gathered up all his abstract-expressionist canvases and, in an act that has gone down in local legend, drove to the Berkeley city dump and destroyed them. Park had become disenchanted with abstract expressionism's strict, non-representational regimen. He wanted, as he put it, to stop producing "paintings" and start painting "pictures." Two years later, he submitted a clearly representational work, Kids on Bikes, 1950, to a competitive show -- and won, to the astonishment...
...Mather House courtyard will soon be the home of an 800-pound, 10-foot sculpture of three abstract figures holding musical instruments, said House Master Jeffrey G. Williamson yesterday...
...sculpture is very abstract and modern, and therefore is certain to generate some controversy when it is unveiled later this year," said the house master...
Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. From the time the design was chosen in 1981 until its completion in 1982, Maya Ying Lin's somber black granite dead end in Washington was controversial. Conservatives objected that it was both meaninglessly abstract and too dovish. But as soon as it was dedicated, with its roster of 58,000 Americans killed, all but the most relentless cranks were moved and subdued. No other American memorial has been the vessel for so much authentic emotion...